Recent demographics favor entrepreneurs who cater to seniors.
After four months in the hospital, Cissy Shuford, 89, was more than ready to go home.
Her problem: Home was an upstairs apartment. After the amputation of a leg and with weeks of physical therapy ahead, Shuford needed to be on the first floor. On the recommendation of her complex’s manager, she called a new Plano, Texas-based business, Home Matters, which specializes in moving older people.
“They put things where I’d had them in the kitchen. . . . The draperies were even up” when she arrived, Shuford said.
Home Matters is owned by Dianne Connery and Elaine Papier, who have master’s degrees in gerontology, or aging studies. They also share a yen to be entrepreneurs, something they discovered upon meeting in graduate school at the University of North Texas.
“There are people jumping on the aging bandwagon who don’t have the training,” Papier said. “We thought our credibility would give us a head start.”
Their year-old firm is taking advantage of the expanded career and business opportunities connected with an aging population. Between 1996 and 2020, the population age 65 and older is expected to grow by about 57 percent, compared with 21.7 percent for the U.S. population as a whole. People 65 and older number 33.9 million. More than 15 million are older than 75.
“There’s a whole arena out there in which people with a knowledge of the psychology of aging, the sociology of aging, the special needs . . . can use that information to create innovative services,” said Richard Lusky, director of the Center for Studies in Aging at the University of North Texas.
Given the changing demographics, business interest–especially in advertising and marketing–has been slow to develop until recently, said Richard Lee, whose St. Paul-based consulting firm, High-Yield Marketing, develops campaigns aimed at older consumers.
“Two to three years ago, I could count the other firms on the fingers of one hand,” said Lee, who has written about the spending power of the mature market. “Now, there are considerably more.”
Among early growth industries are assisted-living residential complexes and home health care. Employment in privately run home health care nearly doubled to 666,000 by 1996 from 344,000 in 1991, according to the National Association for Home Health Care. Although many of those jobs are for lower-paid home health-care aides, the figures also include registered nurses and physical therapists.
There’s also a large entertainment and travel market for healthy, mobile and relatively affluent retirees.
“If you want to know what the 60- to 75-year-old crowd is doing, go to Las Vegas,” said Clare Rothmeyer, manager of the aging information office at the Community Council of Greater Dallas.
American Demographics reports a small but thriving market for lists of grandparents. The information is collected and sold to direct marketers.
More innovative services will probably start in the same way Home Matters did with creative thinking by individual entrepreneurs, said Allison Patterson, who edits a newsletter, Selling to Seniors, by CD Publications.
“It’s going to start out grass-roots and grow, just as senior housing grew,” Patterson said.
Connery and Papier, who worked for social-service agencies and hospitals after getting their master’s degrees, saw firsthand the trauma of breaking up households and moving. It’s tough on older people and their adult children.
“I’d be in family conferences, watch the older person sit there and get a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, and watch the family panic,” Connery said.
Although many moves occur in more cheerful circumstances, the decision is momentous. Even deciding what to do with furniture can be painful and time-consuming.
Home Matters markets a “turnkey” move, with milk in the fridge and clean sheets on the bed. The two women help families talk through alternatives and will shop for senior-friendly sites, if needed.
“It’s important for us to advocate for the older person. They can be overwhelmed,” Papier said. The entrepreneurs take bids and choose movers, although they frequently pack special belongings themselves, enlisting a crew of female friends in Plano.
The women like to videotape their clients’ former homes so that their new ones can mirror the old ones as closely as possible right down to the arrangement of personal items on mantles or dressers.
Home Matters is a “badly needed service,” said Shuford, who is planning for her 90th birthday in August, a celebration that will feature “champagne, flowers and balloons.”
